


Debris

by kerlin



Category: Farscape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-03
Updated: 2010-09-03
Packaged: 2017-10-11 10:37:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/111507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kerlin/pseuds/kerlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The ghosts of the past wouldn't let her alone today.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Debris

"Pleisar Regiment, Icarian Company, assemble for immediate debarkation."

The calm voice broke Aeryn's light sleep, and in one smooth movement she rolled out of her bunk, feet landing firmly on the floor. Her hands found her boots, exactly where she'd left them, and tugged them on as the last vestiges of her brief nap cleared from her mind.

Her sleep had been shallow, her dreams fitful. Velorek had made an extremely unwelcome appearance in her mind for the first time in nearly a monen, his eyes deep and pained as he spoke of betrayal. Had the call to battle not jarred her out of the dream, Aeryn would have headed for the gym when the chronometer beeped to exorcise Velorek's image. Most likely by making short work of an unsuspecting punching pillar.

Boots were on and secured in microts. Flight jacket was next, and then her fingers were busy pulling hair back into its battle braid as she strode from the room. Possibly her bunkmates were also reacting to the call to arms; she hadn't noticed. Her mind was focused on only one thing: reaching the briefing room to receive orders.

On her way to the briefing room, Aeryn took in the flickering orange lights along the hallways, which indicated a low-priority warning. She wondered briefly what the warning was for before she curbed that thought. It wasn't for her to guess; Captain Crais had indicated a low-priority warning and had called the Pleisar Regiment's pilot complement, the Icarians, to assemble with their Prowlers and that was all she need concern herself with.

That was Velorek's influence, there, the wondering. After so long, he could still reach out and take hold of her like that. Aeryn wasn't sure which was more dangerous: the fact that his memory still held her so strongly, evoking emotions she'd never wanted to feel; or the fact that she wasn't sure she wanted to let go of those emotions.

She reached the entrance to the briefing room and hesitated, just slightly. She glanced back over her shoulder and her eyes took in the stark corridors, the flickering lights, the uniformed figures moving quickly and efficiently. Before she could catch herself, she had scanned half a dozen faces, hoping for a flicker of recognition based on a face she'd only seen once.

The ghosts of the past wouldn't let her alone today.

Aeryn squared her shoulders and entered the briefing room. Three quarters of Icarian Company's pilots had already assembled and within microts the final few pilots entered and took their seats in front of their equipment lockers.

Sixty pilots sat, backs straight, eyes and heads locked rigidly forward, hands crossed tensely in their laps. The only sound was an almost imperceptible creak of leather as someone shifted his weight on his hard bench, and Aeryn knew that disapproval was flashing through the minds of all the pilots for that moment of weakness.

The tension in the room climbed a notch and everyone shifted slightly to come even more to attention, as if that were possible, when the squadron leader, Senior Officer Jad Torell, entered the room. He stood at the end of the room, his voice booming down the rows, meaty arms crossed behind his back.

"Icarian Company, we have a situation with one of the Leviathan prisoner transports. Three prisoners have managed to gain control of the ship and are attempting to escape. Your mission is to disable the Leviathan by flying strafing runs in attack groups of three. Target the propulsion systems. The Prowlers are prepped and will be launched within the quarter arn." Torell didn't ask for questions. Peacekeepers never asked questions; the only information they needed to know was in the mission briefing.

_Is the control collar still in place?_ Aeryn's mind slipped in a question anyway and she nearly snarled in frustration. She would have to work these betraying thoughts out of her mind in the heat of battle. It wasn't anything she hadn't done before. When she'd returned to Pleisar Regiment after Velorek had been taken into custody, she had flown her first mission with such a ferocity and single-mindedness that Torell had sought her out and threatened her with transferal back to transport duty. He didn't want a pilot with a death wish, he'd informed her angrily.

Today she could control herself. _Channel the anger, channel the pain, but don't let it control you._

Her mind churned, but her body was going through the familiar movements of pulling on the flight suit, fastening it tightly, tugging to double check, sliding on gloves, tucking the helmet under her arm.

The flight deck was full of activity, techs doing last minute preflight checks, pilots reaching their Prowlers and climbing in, more techs clearing flight paths for Pleisar's Prowlers to exit the massive hangar bay...

Aeryn didn't give a second glance to the tech who was in the final seconds of a preflight countdown on her Prowler. Not like it was her Prowler, really; to make sure that no pilot grew specifically attached to any one craft, Pleisar Regiment's complement of Prowlers were rotated through its pilots every two monens. There had been a young pilot in Aeryn's age group at Prowler attack school who had grown so attached to her snub fighter that she'd named it. When the instructors had found out, they had forced her to take the craft apart and place all of its integral components in the bins where replacement parts were found. The girl had cried herself to sleep that night, something that only provoked the others in the training group to harass her until one day she hadn't returned to the barracks, never to be seen again. Aeryn had watched the entire process with a detached puzzlement for the girl's foolishness in allowing sentiment to get in the way of her training.

_Velorek._ The name whispered in her mind and this time she did snarl, the noise safely muffled by her flight helmet microts before the comms among the fighter groups were activated.

"Seventh Group, follow me." Flight Officer Tauvo Crais's voice sounded in Aeryn's comm and she punched the ignition, taking comfort in the familiar roar of Prowler engine and the vibration of the cockpit. Adrenaline began pumping, and her vision grew crystal clear. This was who she was, what she had been working toward since birth.

The familiar void of space welcomed her as she exited the hangar bay, behind and to the left of Tauvo Crais's Prowler. Almost immediately Aeryn saw the Leviathan. It had drifted away from the main carrier group, and the first group of three Prowlers had already looped around to begin their strafing run.

Crais led Aeryn and the third pilot in their attack group, Lasra Benwar, in the same pattern that the previous groups had followed. Out, away from the Command Carrier, carefully keeping formation, working as three parts of a whole. Then back after looping around a small asteroid, screaming toward the Leviathan. Aeryn saw the two previous attack groups perform their strafing runs and peel off, explosions blossoming on the Leviathan's skin in the darkness of space.

Then it was their turn. Aeryn positioned herself carefully and waited for Crais's order, which came soon enough. A flick of her thumb and she fired, two or three blasts finding a target very near to the propulsion system, another few skittering past the Leviathan to continue on through space.

Aeryn ground her teeth even as she banked tightly to follow Crais back around on a similar vector to their previous one. All of those shots should have landed, and not just near the propulsion system, on the propulsion system. She was distracted, her mind was not on her task. Next time, she swore, all her shots would land.

She was so furious with herself that the flash of blue out of the corner of her eye almost didn't register until too late.

"What the frell?" Benwar's shocked voice echoed in her comm just before a white mass appeared out of nowhere directly in front of their flight group. Too fast, it all happened too fast -

Crais's Prowler slammed into the white craft, his right cannon clipping the odd craft's wing. He pinwheeled over and over again, completely out of control, and the last thing Aeryn saw before she was forced to yank her Prowler away was the flash as the Prowler exploded against an asteroid.

Aeryn, in full battle-lust, struggled to get her Prowler under control in the wake of Crais's crash. Off her right wing, she was vaguely aware of Benwar having the same difficulties. Microts ticked by as the Prowler rolled in space, and then Aeryn was able to pull it back on course, noticing that Benwar had also regained control.

There was no need for communication. Together, the two Prowlers arrowed back toward the Leviathan. After the initial coordinated strafing run, attacks had been left in the hands of the group leaders. Aeryn had seniority over Benwar, and moved them into position to strafe the propulsion systems once more.

"Terminate assault. Repeat, all Prowlers terminate assault."

Frell _that!_

They were so close to the Leviathan, she had the propulsion system locked on in her targeting sights. She would not fail this time. Almost before the thought actively entered her mind she was punching in propulsion and moving just a bit closer to the Leviathan. If she fired the shot that disabled the escaping ship, she wouldn't be reprimanded for it.

_You found that something special to single yourself out with. _

Aeryn clamped her jaws even tighter and angled for that one perfect shot -

_What the -_

White fire enveloped the Prowler, every alarm in the cockpit went off at once in a cacophony of screaming noise, and the entire world was suddenly black as the power of the Leviathan's starburst knocked Aeryn into unconsciousness and dragged the Prowler along like so much space debris.


End file.
